


Air

by sophiahelix



Series: Elements [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Inexperience, Virgin Katsuki Yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 03:09:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9638384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: Victor falls in love lightly, easily. A note of music, a scent on the air. The curve of a hip, the touch of a hand. He falls in love for as long as it lasts, a summer or a winter. Once for a year; once for an afternoon.The first thing he falls in love with is Yuuri Katsuki’s mouth, and everything follows after that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Second in a planned series of three stories (though I have a feeling a fourth one might demand an appearance).
> 
> Thanks again to shdwsilk for the in-depth beta wrangling.

Victor falls in love lightly, easily. A note of music, a scent on the air. The curve of a hip, the touch of a hand. He falls in love for as long as it lasts, a summer or a winter. Once for a year; once for an afternoon. 

The first thing he falls in love with is Yuuri Katsuki’s mouth, and everything follows after that.

To tell the truth, he'd forgotten all about what happened at the Sochi banquet. Competitions come and go and the season hurtles on, costumes and choreography, planes and hotel rooms, a hundred hours on the ice practicing a single pass. It's simple in its complexity, all parts of a great, moving machine, circling around him in pendulum swings he's long ago mastered. Life is easy because it's difficult, obstacles and challenges always keeping him alert. Victor Nikiforov is rarely still.

And then the season ends and he's back in his apartment, the skating milieu dispersed for a while. Yakov is at the seaside on vacation, or so he claims, and Victor returns to his beautiful, empty home, with too much time to think.

Victor hates being truly alone. In a crowd he's all right, moving along with music in his ears and his eyes on the horizon, coming down to earth when he chooses. He likes the noise of other people, watching as they work and play, fight and love, going through those motions of life that are distant and strange to him. Alone, without those dim shapes to measure and surpass, it's harder to know himself.

One afternoon he gets an email alert for his own name, a video link with thousands of hits. He opens it to see the man from the Sochi banquet, performing Victor’s program. His skating is slower, blurred, like he's underwater, but there’s a fresh spark of passion and grace. Victor watches, feeling the ache of the jumps in his calves, the stretch of his spine and the cool air of the ice in the spins, and begins to fall in love.

At the end of the video Yuuri Katsuki smiles, speaking to a friend across the rink. Victor can't understand what he says but he watches Yuuri’s mouth, the shy strength and humor in it. He remembers, suddenly, three glasses of champagne in a banquet hall, the polite hum of chatter shattered by loud music and dance. This man in the middle of it, loose and wild, clearing away the usual stiff, dull formality of these events. Dancing with him, and the way he clung to Victor after, asking for the world with his wide, laughing mouth.

“Who _was_ that? Someone from the junior division?” Victor asked Yakov, when the dancing had broken up, the man pulled away by friends or a coach.

Yakov frowned. “Don't you remember him? The skater from Japan? He crashed and burned in the free skate.”

“Oh, right, the one who wouldn't take a picture with me,” Victor said. “It'll ruin my photo collage, having that blank space.”

Yakov snorted. “I wouldn't worry about it. I don’t think you'll be seeing him again in competition.”

And Victor forgot, until the video of an out of shape skater performing his program with less skill and more feeling came into his life, until a smile made his heart lift in that old familiar way, slipping into love like a kite loosed from its string. It floated up and away, eastwards, and Victor followed it the way he always had, careless of where it might lead.

It took him here, eight months later, to a bed in Barcelona, with the lights of the city below and Yuuri Katsuki kneeling over his lap.

Yuuri’s hair is damp. He wears a short robe; not one of the thick white hotel ones but a pale green cotton robe from home, open at the neck and sliding off his shoulders. He has one hand pressed to the middle of Victor’s bare chest, his heat surrounding Victor’s heart, and he's looking down with so much fierce, hesitant desire that Victor wants to stay here forever, waiting to see what he’ll do.

They've taken it slow. Victor likes it. Everything has been different this year; coaching instead of skating, watching instead of leading. Waiting, instead of taking. 

Now he waits to feel Yuuri’s kiss. Sometimes Yuuri moves sharp and sudden, coming at him like it’s a forbidden impulse, something he has to push himself into. Sometimes it's slow and sweet like it was at the beginning, easing himself into Victor’s space as if he's holding his breath.

Tonight Yuuri does neither. He just looks at Victor, so long that it's Victor who holds his breath, Victor with the impulse to seize him by shoulders, taking what he wants. He waits, though, to see Yuuri in this new mood, sitting up still and straight on Victor’s lap, watching him.

“I promised you something if I won,” Yuuri says at last, softly.

Ah. Victor nods, keeping his face calm even as shivers run through his body, down his spine. He knows what Yuuri’s talking about. “But you didn't win.”

“No,” Yuuri says. There's a long pause, and an uncertain look comes into his eyes, his brows coming down slightly, mouth parted. He's still wearing his glasses, and Victor decides to raise one hand, reaching for them, to see what he’ll do.

Yuuri blinks, but he lets Victor take his glasses off, turning his head slightly so one wire arm bends, catching over the shell of his ear before slipping free. Then his dark eyes are wide and clear, nothing between the two of them. Victor longs to lean in and kiss him, drawing him down, but he doesn't.

It seems to strengthen Yuuri, having his glasses off, like he's on the ice. Maybe he feels like a performer now, holding power over an audience, or maybe it's easier when he can't see so well. He squints for just a moment, and then he seems to make his decision. 

Yuuri strokes his hand down Victor’s chest, smiling. It's a new smile, one Victor has watched him learn this year, small and sidelong. When he smiles like that, Victor never quite knows what will happen.

“Victor,” Yuuri sighs, shaking his head, as if Victor needs chastising. “What should I give you for a silver medal?” 

Victor finally relents to temptation, bringing his hands up to hold Yuuri’s hips through the thin cotton of his robe. Yuuri’s leaning in now, their faces close, neither of them looking away.

“Same thing I’d want for a gold medal,” Victor says, feeling Yuuri’s warm weight on his lap, the pressure of his hand on his chest, the heat of his mouth as they draw closer. “You.”

Yuuri smiles again, genuine and amused now, and then he leans in to kiss Victor at last.

It's their first kiss since the night they arrived here, thick with exhaustion and thrummed with nerves. This is different, _more_ than it’s been before; Yuuri curving around him, kissing him, bare feet tucked under his thighs. Victor strokes Yuuri’s hips, his back, sliding lower down, and Yuuri makes a noise and shifts closer, rising up on his knees. 

God. It goes right through Victor, a hot jolt that makes it hard to breathe. All those slow nights in Hasetsu he held off, waiting for Yuuri to come to him. In the end they met halfway, still hesitant and strained, Yuuri asking and Victor giving. After, Yuuri _took_ , with a strange new something in his eyes, hot and honest and real.

That's the Yuuri that Victor wants to feel now. Mouth working against his, hand pushing into his hair, hips rocking and restless. He wants Yuuri in motion, on the verge, unfolding before him.

“Touch me,” Yuuri murmurs.

Victor slides his hands down, finding the hem of Yuuri’s robe. He moves his hands underneath and Yuuri groans against his mouth, arching his hips into it. He's still up on his knees a little, and Victor can feel the tension in his thighs, bare and strong as Victor strokes them with his fingertips. 

He goes slow now, kissing Yuuri all the way. Small, nibbling kisses, teasing at Yuuri’s full lower lip, stealing his breath. His hands rise under the cotton of his robe, seeking the intimate heat beneath. He comes to where Yuuri’s body swells out, muscular and smooth, and holds that sweet curve with both hands. Now Yuuri pants into his mouth, snatching hard kisses, and Victor’s hands tremble, touching him. They're in this together, and he's dizzy with the infinite promise.

It's so much. Victor has to stop, breathing hard, and for a moment he feels what Yuuri does, so vulnerable and new. Nothing with Yuuri has been the same as anything else in his life; not like the brief, friendly love affairs of recent years, nor like his youth, when he wore a bold face with older men as if his air of confidence would keep him safe. He thinks, with a sudden, bright pain, that he's never been as young as Yuuri is.

But Yuuri is bold, too. He kisses Victor again, gentle now, leaning into it. His hand is soft on Victor’s face, fingers sliding through his hair, and this is everything Victor knows, just his yearning warmth.

At last Victor comes back to his sense of himself, taking a deep breath. He strokes the smooth curves beneath his hands and finds the deeper place between, that lush, defined heat. His fingertips slide down, trailing along. Yuuri lets out a soft, aching sound that sends heat through Victor, his chest clenching tight.

“There,” he murmurs, soothing, between kisses. “Shh, let me — can I? _Yuuri_.”

He scarcely knows what he's saying, just quiet words against Yuuri’s mouth as he touches him. His heart is pounding and it feels like something he needs desperately, for Yuuri to let him come close. Yuuri groans again, louder, his shoulders hunching up, but he shifts so he arches into Victor’s hands and that's it, all Victor wants. For Yuuri to want, too.

Under his fingers Yuuri’s skin is so hot and delicate. Victor’s taken as always by the contrasts; the places which are smooth or slightly rough, dry or sweetly damp, soft and giving, tense and firm. He strokes the fine hairs, the tender weight, feeling Yuuri gasp against his mouth. Victor’s heart still races, and there’s that sense of urgent discovery throbbing in his veins, a raw newness he never thought he'd feel this strongly again. 

Victor opens his mouth under Yuuri’s and lets one finger come to rest, making tiny circles. They kiss as it happens, Victor moving the tip of his finger deeper, deeper, in slow degrees that ripple out through Yuuri’s whole body, shaking and tense. Yuuri slides his tongue into Victor’s mouth, and Victor tips his head back against the wall, taking it.

He thinks their hearts are racing each other now. There's so much tension in the room; Yuuri’s legs locked around his thighs, and the desperate, gasping way he's kissing Victor, pushing into him as Victor does the same. It's too much, an impossibly tall wave about to break, and Victor turns his head away at last, panting for air.

Yuuri collapses forward, dropping his forehead against Victor’s temple. His breath is hot and wet on Victor’s neck, and his body is still tensed and trembling.

Victor’s stunned by how little it's taken to bring him to this place, shaken and dizzy, his fast pulse jangling. One hand on Yuuri’s bare skin, under his robe, the other barely inside the heat of his body, yet still overwhelmed with this sense of nearness, intimacy. He's spent eight months learning everything about Yuuri Katsuki, the way he moves and thinks and feels, but tonight his senses are saturated with him and he's caught beneath the wave.

He’s loved before, many times, but always lightly. Loved parts of a person, known or glimpsed, but never the whole. Never remained in one place from spring to winter, from fallen white cherry blossoms to snow again. Never stayed, never been caught.

“Victor,” Yuuri breathes in his ear, breaking over the word.

He hears the need in Yuuri’s voice, feels the way Yuuri leans into him. It's difficult but Victor opens his eyes, shaking away the haze from his head, and slowly withdraws his hands, reaching for the bedside table. Yuuri shudders, mouthing at the side of Victor’s neck. Victor finds what he needs, working blind with his hands behind Yuuri’s back, and then reaches under Yuuri’s robe to touch him again.

Yuuri moans when he does, thighs tensing harder. He kisses Victor’s neck and moves his hands up to brace on the wall behind Victor’s head, lifting himself up more. Victor can see his face now, eyes closed and mouth open, and Victor’s ears ring with the beauty of this moment, Yuuri giving himself up to this. He goes careful and slow, moving his slicked finger gently, seeking.

“Good,” Victor says. “Good?”

Yuuri nods, without opening his eyes. Victor looks everywhere; at the curling damp ends of his hair and his long lean neck, rising out of the short robe that's still falling open over his chest, its short hem brushing his strong, smooth thighs. Victor looks and looks, and at last he can't resist pushing away the front of Yuuri’s robe to reach inside.

At his touch, Yuuri gasps, fingernails scraping the wood behind Victor. He drops his head back, his bare chest heaving. He's hard under Victor’s hand, but his skin is so soft as Victor strokes him with his fingertips, over and over, in time with the movements of his other hand. It's all so light and delicate, just these airy touches, but Yuuri is falling apart above him, humming like a water-filled glass as Victor runs his finger along the rim. 

“Victor,” Yuuri moans, as Victor wraps a loose hand around him. “I—” He says something else, muttered words lost as he turns his head to press his mouth against his arm. He's still breathing hard, his whole body arching into Victor’s hands. 

_Look at me_ , Victor almost says, but he doesn't. It's too much, the sharp brightness of Yuuri now, his beauty and his want, his need. He breathes quickly himself, thinking only of the places where he's touching Yuuri. The soft secret heat around his finger, the aching hardness beneath his hand, and Yuuri’s hips rocking between, as he moans into his arm. The building ecstasy, like music Victor can't quite hear, the rush of blood and air. The forward movement, as everything opens before them.

Yuuri groans again, harder, and then lifts his head, opening his eyes. They're dark and certain, with such intense longing that Victor’s stunned again, caught in Yuuri’s gaze. He's making Yuuri feel this way, building and shaping it with his hands, but in an instant everything feels different, turned on its head. Yuuri wants this from him, and somehow the asking is more powerful than the giving.

“Yes,” Yuuri says, a catch in his voice. He bites his lip, the color high in his cheeks. “Like that, please, _yes_.”

Victor keeps touching him, stroking him, and Yuuri doesn't look away. He's gasping with every breath, holding his body tense and still, straining into Victor’s touches. Victor squeezes him gently, pausing to sweep his thumb over soft damp skin, and rubs with the pad of his finger, quick and unrelenting. Yuuri lets out a cry, hips jerking forward, and Victor wants to touch him everywhere, feel the strength in his bare chest and angular shoulders, his taut stomach and lean arms, pull him forward into a hungry kiss. 

He watches, instead, as Yuuri weathers the storm. Eyes falling shut again, mouth open wide as he cries out once, twice. Palms slapped flat against the wall and the cords in his neck standing out, as he throws his head back. His whole body arching, shaking, as he soaks the front of his robe.

Victor’s only seen this twice before. The first time, it was in the dimness of Yuuri’s childhood room, rain falling outside and Yuuri shivering and stiff, overwhelmed. It was easier the next time, their hands on each other as they kissed under the blankets, but now — 

Now Yuuri is before him, powerful, on display, vulnerable. Letting himself be seen. Victor feels the heat and wetness of his body, these human things he loves, making him real, and falls deeper in love than he’s ever been. Caught.

In a few moments he has Yuuri close to him again, weight dropped fully on his lap and head resting against the wall. Victor wraps his arms around Yuuri’s back, feeling his heaving, uneven breaths, noisy against his neck. 

“Yuuri,” he says softly. “Did you really think I came to Hasetsu just because of a video?”

They haven't talked about this yet. Yuuri makes a surprised inhale in Victor’s arms, but he doesn't move away. They've come so far from a windy day at the beach, his story of refusing to be held or reassured this way. He isn't afraid to need, not anymore.

“I didn't understand it,” Yuuri says, at last, his voice rough and tired. “We were so far apart. We'd never even spoken.”

Victor laughs, low. “I tried. Anyway, you did better than speaking, later.”

Yuuri takes in a slow, deep breath, and then he straightens up, looking at Victor. He's still flushed, his eyes bright, and Victor looks at him for a moment before meeting his gaze again.

“I don't remember asking,” Yuuri says, seriously. “Making that final — it was like climbing a mountain so high I thought I'd never reach the top. I couldn't believe I was really there, and I was so afraid I'd fall right back down. And — I did.”

Victor nods. He's never even thought of falling, but he knows more now.

Yuuri licks his lips. When he speaks again, it's so soft Victor can hardly hear. “You were that mountain. Or the sky, I'm not sure which. Something to reach for, not speak to. My whole life.”

“I didn't know that,” Victor says. Or maybe he did, but Yuuri has never said, not out loud. 

Yuuri smiles. It's wry and a little bittersweet, knowing and loving, and everything Victor loves about him is there in his mouth. “Don't you know, you're that way to everyone?”

His words crackle over Victor’s skin, painful, sharp. They touch off something deep, like a fall of little avalanches in his chest, but Victor clears his throat and smiles, rising above. He raises one hand, reaching to brush his thumb over Yuuri’s lower lip.

“I came to Hasetsu because you asked me to,” Victor says. “Maybe you fell, but you still wanted the sky.”

Yuuri opens his mouth a little, taking the tip of Victor’s thumb between his lips. His tongue pushes forward, sliding slow and warm over Victor’s skin, and he watches Victor through half-closed eyes. Arousal so strong it hurts flares through Victor, hot in the pit of his belly, and his breath goes short. _I promised you something._

He pulls his thumb back, swiping the soft inside of Yuuri’s lip. Yuuri kisses it, lifting his hand to smooth over Victor’s chest. Palm warm and fingers spread, going down.

“I still want it,” Yuuri says, and leans in to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [sophia-helix](http://sophia-helix.tumblr.com)


End file.
